The Google Analytics Certified Partner Summit 2017 took place in the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco on the 30th and 31st August. We were there along with representatives from approximately 500 other GACP agencies from around the world.

The Fairmont Hotel is a stunning venue in the Nob Hill area of San Francisco – a fitting venue for such a prestigious event. At the end of the first day, we were treated to a drinks reception on the 25th floor with 360 panoramic views of the Bay Area, including Alcatraz, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. Wow.

View of San Francisco at the Google Analytics 2017 partner summit

We were also one of the chosen few who were invited to the Google Tag Manager and Optimize Immersion Day which took place the day after the Summit (1st September) in the Google Offices on Spear St, San Francisco.

The event took place on the 7th floor, with a stunning outdoor patio right beside the Bay Bridge – we got to spend the day chatting to the teams responsible for GTM and Optimize, learning about the technology behind the products, the road-map ahead and giving feedback directly to the decision-makers. We also got to sign the GTM sign from the Summit and have some beers on the balcony. A surreal experience – and a day we’ll remember for a long, long time.

Belfast -> Dublin -> San Francisco (and back) is roughly a 24-hour round-trip so we stuck around for a bit, did some sight-seeing, soaked up the sunshine and took a detour to Las Vegas for a few nights.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but here’s a few photos from our time in San Francisco…

We’ve been back in the office for almost a week now, our sleeping pattern is almost back to normal and we’ve had some time to process the trip and what we learned after an inspirational, whirlwind few days immersed in all things Google.

What did we learn? Well, pretty much everything is under NDA so we can’t actually share with you (sorry!) but what we can say is there’s lots of really exciting updates in the pipeline, particularly for Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio – which is great for us as they’re the three products we use on a daily basis. Oh and they’re also the three products which we’re now officially certified in by Google.